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Dolfi Stoki
AFC
African Scenes |
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Flash Camouflage
I have documented almost all of my paintings from start to finish. Sometimes you come across an idea or technique that you may like to incorporate later on in another painting and these documented steps are an invaluable tool for remembering these tips.
After the initial research and ideas, I will draw my painting out with a pastel pencil on my canvas, making notes of certain areas I need to pay attention to. The subject matter here is Zebra, so I try and get all my highlights and white stripes in first.
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Flash Camouflage
Once my whites are in, I will come in with my darks. Painting zebras area little different to painting other animals because of their stripe patterning. I like to put my base coat of mid colours in wet on wet with most of my paintings but with the alternating stripes, I have to work one colour at a time allowing plenty of drying time before I move on to the next colour.
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Flash Camouflage
So in the with the dark stripes - I have seen a lot of people make the error of painting in the dark stripes before the whites. Once I have all the stripes in the next thing I do is start to lay the foundations for the detail work. This when I will spend a bit of time working on the eyes and the muzzles of these zebra. I want to try and give each one an individual look and personality here, so there will be subtle changes in appearance between the different animals.
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Flash Camouflage
Last step is to add a three dimensionalism to the zebras by adding some washes to the painting. This is where I will come in and add some fine detail work on the faces... I will put in vains, and shadows on the face, and separate some of the bodies on the canvas by slowly building up the shadows from a very translucent glazing to a final dark wash in some areas.
This painting took me seven days to complete. The downside to it was all the stripes. For at least four of those seven days I went to bed in the evenings seeing stripes!
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Flash Camouflage
This to give you an example of the size of the painting. I chose to do this one quite large. I thought that the original composition's "wow factor" would be lost on a smaller canvas so I opted for something quite big and striking. Incidentally the zebras here on this canvas are life size.
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Direct Correspondence to:
Dolfi Stoki
c/o Rock Solid Africa
118 Marimba Road, Matsheumhlope
Bulawayo, Matabeleland
Zimbabwe
Tel: +263 772126621
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Email: dolfi.stoki@gmail.com
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